


The TARDIS House Rules

by copperbadge



Series: The Rulesverse [3]
Category: Doctor Who, Torchwood
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-06-09
Updated: 2008-06-09
Packaged: 2017-12-03 09:01:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/696566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/copperbadge/pseuds/copperbadge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life with the Doctor is both simple and complex, but fortunately Nicholas and Donna have the Whenkipedia to guide them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_No guns. No, really. No guns._   
_Edit, CJHarkness: No shortage of bananas, though._

Nicholas didn't tell anyone that he was going with the Doctor. He'd made the decision almost before the Doctor had finished offering, but it didn't do to show too eager, he'd found. Besides, the Doctor had seemed like he could use a bit of good old-fashioned discipline and Nicholas knew, as all trained servants know, that the tyranny of the employer is nothing compared to the tyranny of his keeper. 

So he'd decided to go and he hadn't told anyone -- and still Jack knew, because Jack always knew. 

To be fair and in Jack's favour, he'd given no free advice or kindly warnings, didn't ask him if he'd come back, didn't tell him to be safe. The only thing he'd done was appear at Nicholas's door one night, the last night Nicholas would spend on Earth for a while, and tell him one thing.

"No guns," he'd said. "The Doctor doesn't like them."

Nicholas had looked down at the bag he was packing, a simple backpack with some underwear and socks and a couple of granola bars. He'd reached inside and taken out the Torchwood-issue sidearm he'd carried as a field agent and offered it to Jack, grips-first.

Jack had taken it, gripped his wrist with his other hand, drawn Nicholas forward, and kissed him on the forehead. It was the same benediction he'd given Gwen's daughter Bethan the day she was born. 

"I'll tell the others," he said, and then he left.

***

_It is petty and beneath a Companion to be jealous or snide regarding previous Companions._   
_Edit, MJones: Even if they deserve it._

When Donna comes on board, Nicholas is in the kitchen, frying an egg. He's decided to sit this one out; it sounds like boring recon, and it's twenty-first-century Earth, and Nicholas has been there and done that.

There's a thudding noise as the Doctor enters the TARDIS and then, like coming home, a familiar shout.

"NICHOLAS! A BIT OF HELP!"

Nicholas sighs, puts his egg in the oven to stay warm, and emerges, wiping his hands.

There is a woman in the TARDIS control room, older than Nicholas, long pretty hair and terrible, terrible taste in clothing.

"Just coming, Doctor," Nicholas says. "Hallo miss."

"Who're you then?" she demands. 

Oh, this is going to be interesting. 

"Donna, Nicholas, Nicholas, Donna. She'll be traveling with us for a while," the Doctor says, and Nicholas tries not to grin at the sight of his Doctor, hero of many galaxies, staggering under the weight of Donna's luggage. "You two ought to get on like a house on fire."

"Allow me," he says, easing the top layer off the Doctor's arms, hooking one of the suitcases on the floor into his hands with a foot. 

"Well, he's flexible," Donna observes. 

"Shall I show you to your room?" Nicholas asks. 

"He didn't tell me he kept a butler. Where were you hiding last time?" she asks Nicholas, as he lugs the bags down a corridor.

"I'm a recent acquisition, ma'am," he says. 

"Donna's fine. Donna Noble."

"Donna it is," Nicholas dumps the bags in one of the rooms, two doors down from his own. "You've traveled with the Doctor before, then?"

"Oh, briefly," she says, and he can tell she's trying to sound sophisticated and accustomed to all this.

"Then I'm certain you've packed good running shoes," he says.

***

_You can't fix the Doctor. It's all right. We couldn't either._

Nicholas has seen many wonders in his time at Torchwood, and he's seen a handful with the Doctor as well. It's only fair, really, to step back a bit and let Donna have her time in the sun. Besides, after six months of brilliant adventures and lots of running, Nicholas finds himself pining a little for the good old days in Cardiff, where the evil came to them instead of them actively seeking it out. 

And he likes to see them together, working things through, the Doctor and Donna. As his father would say, he does for the Doctor, and it's no pain to do for Donna as well -- make sure her terrible clothing is clean and pressed, keep them both in tea and snacks, be the one who putters about fixing cocoa after they break out the Ood (giant brain, oh god, giant Oodbrain, why aren't they as freaked out as he is by the _giant brain?_ ).

He likes to look after people. And there is a certain reward in it too, when he fixes the tea properly and the Doctor gives him that one expression, as if Nicholas understands a part of him that nobody has for a long time. The Doctor hurts, and there's nothing he can do about that, but the Doctor essentially likes to look after people too. He just does it on a cosmic scale, with rhetoric and wits and a sonic screwdriver, and Nicholas does it with hot drinks. It works for them.

And they do see such things. Oh, such wonderful things. 

***

_You're not allowed to take on extra companions as pets. It just doesn't end well._

The day the Doctor gets a call from Martha, Nicholas feels perhaps that he himself is acting a little less than professional, really, but he can't entirely be blamed. It's Martha, after all. He tags close behind the Doctor, pulling rank and experience on Donna for once, but when the Doctor becomes wrapped up in metaphorically crusading against global warming he also sees the signs of trouble and, though the Doctor would be angry if he knew, Nicholas dials Torchwood. 

"Jack," he says, when Jack answers the private line in his office. "What's Martha doing with UNIT?"

"Good to hear your voice again too," Jack drawls. "She's on loan. How long have you been out?"

Nicholas puzzles over what he means for a second until Jack adds, "It's only been two weeks for us." 

"Oh -- oh! Six months, give or take. Also, you need to come to UNIT headquarters right now."

"Okay," Jack says, just like that, and hangs up.

There are advantages to knowing how to blend in, as Nicholas proves while he's waiting for Torchwood to arrive. He's heard of the Sontarans from the Doctor; while he isn't any flashbang with a pistol he knows how to hit a blatantly obvious weak spot when he sees one, and by the time UNIT is pulling their _pants up_ he's taken out five or six Sontaran soldiers. Now is no time for the Doctor's squeamishness about guns, and it should be pointed out that while the Doctor doesn't do any shooting, a lot of the time others will do the shooting _for_ him whether he grants permission or not.

Nicholas isn't the Doctor. He isn't even close. He isn't Jack either, but he was trained by Ianto and Ianto knows all about how useless martyrdom can be. 

He's rustling up some more guns from dead UNIT soldiers -- poor sods, but they won't miss their sidearms -- when he hears a muffled moan. 

One of the soldiers isn't so dead as he first appeared.

"Hello, sunshine," Nicholas says, skidding to his knees next to the half-conscious man in the ubiquitous red beret. "Lucky man. They must have winged you." 

"Doctor," the man mumbles. "Said don't fire..."

"He always forgets to warn people to run, though," Nicholas sighs, and eases the bloke's arm around his shoulders, heaving him upright. "I'm Nicholas. What's your name?"

"Said not to fire..."

"Yes yes. Name, rank, serial number?"

The man looks at him, eyes hazy. "Umm. Ross. Ross Jenkins," he ventures.

"Oh well. Nice to meet you, Ross," he says, and that's when a pair of hands clamp down on his shoulders. 

He screams, of course, but he doesn't let go of Ross the Hot UNIT Guy, and when he turns around with Ross slung against his shoulder Ianto Jones is standing in front of him, smiling. 

"Nice hat," Ianto says to the soldier, who tries groggily to salute. "Hello, Nicholas. Come along, they're closing down the building, we can't do anything more here."

Nicholas mutely hands over his gun, says "Anything that moves, shoot it in the back of the neck," and stumbles after him.

"Didn't know you had a hot brother in UNIT," he adds, as they emerge into a smoky morass outside.

"I don't," Ianto replies, but he's still smiling. The SUV is nearby; Nicholas eases the UNIT man into the back seat.

"I brought you a present," he says to Jack, who is turning around from the front passenger seat. "I know how much you like men in uniform."

Jack takes in the red beret, the pale face, the strong, loose-limbed body. He grins. 

"I'll unwrap it later," he says. "Coming home?"

"Not just yet, but hold my parking space for me, would you?" 

"How are you finding life in the blue box?"

"Brilliant," Nicholas says, and fights the urge to give a sudden retraction, to beg to be taken back to Cardiff. He isn't done with the Doctor, not yet -- he doesn't know how he knows this, but he does. "I found your hologram."

"Hah! I'd forgotten about that. Hope he's helpful."

"Really he is," Nicholas says, and then blurts, "I miss you."

Jack ruffles his hair affectionately, then turns back around. "Gwen?"

Gwen smiles at Nicholas and guns the engine as he slams the door shut. Ianto is already clambering in the other side, and John Hart gives him a hasty wave from the back, where he's bent over a computer and working furiously. In a moment they're out of sight, hidden behind a screen of noxious chemicals. 

Nicholas sighs and turns back to the warehouse. Better find the Doctor; that's where all the action is. 

***

_We think with our brains and no other part of our anatomy. If we don't think with our brains, we don't survive long._   
_Edit, CJHarkness: Even me._

On the planet of the Crazy Cloned Supersoldiers, Nicholas falls in love. Predictably. 

The chase through the tunnels takes a long time, shorter in his memory than it actually was. They stop at one point, when they're far enough ahead of the human soldiers to feel safe, and rest and drink from Nicholas's canteen. Nicholas watches Jenny -- Genny? Gennie? G/Jenny? -- tip her head back as she swallows, then takes the canteen from her and sips a few mouthfuls of tepid water himself. 

Jenny wanders back over to where the Doctor -- her father -- is studying a schematic he's found somewhere, peering over his shoulder as naturally as if she's been raised by him. 

"She's pretty," Donna says conversationally. Nicholas grunts, because in his head he's already picturing their children. Actually, he started out picturing their children, and then he pictured what the Doctor would have to say about his child taking up with a human, and then he pictured being thrown out of the TARDIS in prehistoric Africa, and now he's staring at her hair because that seems safest, really. "And she seems nice."

"Huh," Nicholas agrees, aware that this is just depressingly pathetic. He knows that when they get out of here and get back to the TARDIS he's going to follow Jenny around like a puppy. 

"D'you fancy her? You do, don't you?" Donna asks.

"I do not!" Nicholas protests.

"You fancy her _rotten_."

"So? She's -- I mean look at her, have you spoken with her at all? No right-thinking man wouldn't fancy her." 

"D'you know, it's a funny thing," the Doctor says to Jenny, his voice echoing loudly across the room. "You'd think with all this advanced technology we'd let the machines do our sensing for us, but all five of my senses are still _remarkably_ sharp. I have tremendously good hearing. How about you, Jenny?"

"Tremendously good," she agrees, and she's grinning at him, oh god, he's going to _die_ on a plain somewhere in Africa and _really confuse_ some poor forensic anthropologist millennia later. 

"Come along, then, we're nearly there," the Doctor says, and gestures them down a narrow passage. Donna follows directly behind the Doctor, seniority of age if not experience, and Nicholas follows Donna; Jenny smiles at Nicholas and walks next to him, twining her fingers in his. 

Nicholas isn't fooled. Her other hand is still holding the gun. 

***

_It's better not to ask about his past. In case he actually tells you._

Donna proves to be far better at working the patchwork human-TARDIS interface than Nicholas, scratching around in the basecode of the Whenkipedia as if she's made for it. Nicholas chalks it up to natural intelligence pressed into the mould of a capable temp, able to learn any system or program within a day of working. She builds his profile for him, maintains the records, monitors his alterations, and leaves scathingly brilliant commentary on any planet and time they visit, whether there's already an entry for it or not. Future companions of the Doctor will thank her, and probably make themselves sick laughing (as Nicholas did, ruefully) over her description of the time Nicholas got caught out in a Tarkasian courtship ritual. 

With him and Donna at the helm of the Whenkipedia, it soon goes from Jack Harkness's part-time hobby to a full-on research module. 

And then Donna comes to find him one day while he's doing a fry-up to balm his grieving heart and she says, "You have got to hear this."

There's a little console in the corner that he thought was mainly for turning the oven on and off, but she pushes three buttons and turns a crank and crackling static fills the air. 

_"But you had all of America to knock around in without getting strange looks,"_ says a female voice. _"Why choose London during the air raids? You could have been killed."_

_"So could you,"_ a masculine voice, and Nicholas nearly sets himself on fire.

"That's Jack!" he says, over the woman saying, _"Yeah, but I was just visiting."_

_"So was I. Besides, you know how it was -- air raids, perfect for getting incriminating evidence blown up."_

"Must be this Rose girl," Donna says. "She doesn't half sound chavvy, does she?"

_"Well, it was my homeland, sort of,"_ Jack again. _"My great-grandparents were Earth stock, my grandparents were colonists. Guess where they came from."_

_"Can't possibly."_ It sounds like Rose's mouth is full -- it sounds almost like Jack is drinking, or drunk.

_"Liverpool, yeah,"_ Jack says, in a terrible thick accent that he probably learned off the Beatles.

_"Never!"_

_"Absolutely. Besides, I read about the Blitz. I took a ton of history classes. Most of the Time Agents didn't bother, they just studied where they were going next on the fly, but I loved it. Loved history. I wanted to see it all. And I had the training, anyway, I just needed that Agency spit and polish."_

_"Yeah, that took real well,"_ Rose drawls, and Nicholas laughs. 

"I think I'd have liked to meet this Rose," he says.

"I think I'd like to meet this Harkness," Donna replies. 

"He'd love you. He likes -- " Nicholas stops suddenly. Donna flicks the crank to pause the playback.

"He likes?" she prompts, looking wicked.

"Uh. Women with. You know."

"Big tits?" Donna asks dangerously.

"High tempers!" Nicholas blurts. 

"Did you just say -- "

"He doesn't care what people look like, not really. He just likes people. But he likes extraordinary people best," Nicholas says hurriedly. Donna stops, closes her mouth, and nods. She gives the crank a twist.

_"I don't notice you complaining about my shining boots and erect carriage,"_ which is pure Jack all over.

_"But really, Jack, why London? Why the Blitz? You could have chose any manner of other, safer destructive time."_

There's a contemplative silence. 

_"America was all about sitting home, wishing the boys overseas good luck, baking cookies,"_ Jack says finally, and Nicholas is never going to stop teasing him about baking cookies. _"It's human nature to fight back when we're attacked. It gets the blood flowing. Someone takes a bite out of your home and you straighten up and you roar back at them and you swear you'll go under with the country before you let those assholes see you beat. All the art and science and literature in the world, you can't measure that up against the fury of a human scorned. It's terrible, it's evil, but it's so basic. And there was so much dignity about it in London. There was sex and dancing and rationing and the Home Guard and the uniforms -- kissing your boy and sending him off to fight."_

Another silence. Nicholas clears his throat.

_"I've been through war. My best friend was tortured to death and I hated that war. But. Part of me still loves it. It makes people see how human they are by measuring against how inhuman they are."_

_"That makes no sense, Jack,"_ Rose says, but even without visual they can both tell she's trying to be light and failing. _"No more whiskey for you."_

_"No,"_ Jack says mournfully. _"Where's the Doctor?"_

_"Off somewhere. Puttering, I suppose."_

_"Give me a kiss, Honeysuckle Rose."_

_"Incorrigible Captain Jack,"_ Rose replies, and the recording blips out. 

"Who archived that?" Nicholas asks carefully.

"RTyler," Donna answers. 

"Why, do you suppose?"

Donna shrugs. "I don't know, to put in his profile maybe. What war was he in?"

Nicholas shakes his head. "What war wasn't he in? Jack's...elemental. There are Jacks in every war. Considering all he's been through, it hardly matters."

"We're not exactly Rose and Jack, are we?"

Nicholas laughs. "Did the Doctor want another Rose and Jack? He took me in because I wasn't impressed by him. He took you in because you're brilliant, and anyway I wasn't enough for him. No, it's all right -- he needed you," he adds, when he sees Donna start to protest. She's a good sort that way. "Maybe with Rose he...needed Jack. Or Rose needed him. It doesn't _matter_ , Donna. Here and now, we're his. Give us a kiss, Donna Immaculata," he adds, grinning.

"Give us a slice of fried bread," Donna retorts, and Nicholas obliges with a plate of bread and bacon and egg. 

"Anyway, you'll meet Jack one day, then you'll understand. When the Doctor takes me home, I'll make sure he hangs about long enough for me to introduce you."

Donna gives him an odd look, but she smiles anyway, and Nicholas knows she'll love his friends. 

***

_Betting on events you have prior knowledge of is completely forbidden._

Nicholas is thoroughly unimpressed with Agatha Christie, but that's all right. 

"Lord or servant?" the Doctor asks him, as they emerge into the sunlight, and Nicholas casts his eye over the manor house, the gardens, the uniformed men and women moving to and fro. He gives the Doctor a hungry, puppy-dog grin in reply. "Really?"

"Please?" Nicholas is totally not above begging. "Pretty please? It'll be just like _Upstairs Downstairs_."

"More like _Jeeves and Wooster_ ," Donna remarks. 

"Off with you then, have your fun," the Doctor smiles indulgently, and Nicholas hurries off to the kitchen to present himself to the butler as the Doctor's personal valet. 

It's brilliant, every bit as brilliant as he'd thought it would be -- he's just high enough in the ranks that he isn't required to do any of the heavy lifting, and just low enough that he's accepted into the camaraderie of the kitchen and allowed to flirt with the housemaids. He drinks in the gossip as he gallantly assists the cook in kneading the bread and helps to butcher the meat for dinner, and it's in the midst of this that the Doctor and Donna appear, flinging things around, downing ginger beer and anchovies, kissing and belching toxic gas and generally being their wonderful selves. 

Nicholas watches in amusement, mainly, until they're gone again and all eyes turn to him. Formerly he was the mildly interesting valet of one of the visiting guests; now he's expected to provide suitably lurid explanations for all this madness. 

"Oh, he's a strange one, is my Doctor," he says with a conspiratorial lean, enjoying himself hugely. "Not mad, you understand, but a bit on the..." he tilts his head. 

"Where's he from?" asks the cook.

"Foreign parts," Nicholas says impressively. "He was born abroad. He's been traveling probably his whole life, I reckon."

"Oo-er! And you travel with 'im?"

"The things I could tell you if I'd a mind!" Nicholas stage-whispers.

"Oh, do," says the scullery-maid, then looks suitably chastened for having spoken without being addressed. 

"Well," Nicholas says, adjusting times and locations on the fly, because the Babel Tower of New New New York won't exist for a few millenia, "I've been in the tallest building in New York City on the very top floor."

"I'd die!" says the housemaid.

"Lots of people get sick," Nicholas informs her gravely. "And we've gone boar-hunting in Greece -- " (mostly true, except it was the _Caledonian_ boar hunt) " -- and hiking in Tibet, the land of Shangri-La."

"What's Shangri-La?" one of them asks.

"It's a mythical thing," Nicholas says, backpedaling. 

"He must be just a little bit mad, mustn't he?" says one of the other valets. "Never settling down like that. Unless he's a missionary."

"Not mad, just unhappy," Nicholas replies. "He's...seen a lot of sadness. He feels suffering deeply."

"Bad thing in a doctor."

"Perhaps, but it makes him a good man. I suppose he is a missionary, in his own way."

"Who's the woman with him, Miss Noble?" one of the housemaids asks. 

"Traveling companion, sort of an amanuensis," he replies.

"Bit on the side, you mean," one of the footmen grunts. Everyone looks to Nicholas to see if the thrown gauntlet will be taken up.

"If you don't know the meaning of _amanuensis_ you've only to ask," he says loftily.

"Don't need to. Lady like that, traveling with a wealthy bloke like the Doctor -- "

"Just because you'd hire one if you could doesn't mean he does."

"Don't mean he don't, either."

"The Doctor's private business is his own," says the butler, coming into the room, and everyone immediately falls to their appointed tasks, Nicholas returning to his mopping of the spilled anchovies. "Nicholas, are the Doctor and Miss Noble's rooms to their satisfaction?"

"Eminently, thank you," he replies, relishing every minute of this little roleplay. God, what he wouldn't give to wait at table during the dinner. 

He thinks it's a tribute to how well he's been trained by Ianto and the Doctor that he hardly bats an eye when the giant wasp shows up. 

***

_It isn't nice to tease the Doctor._   
_Edit, CJHarkness: Speak for yourself._   
_Edit, RTyler: Fine, it isn't EFFECTIVE to tease the Doctor._

"We're stuck," the Doctor announces.

"Stuck in what?" Donna demands. Nicholas does love that Donna always gets straight to the point.

"Gravity?" the Doctor ventures, studying one of his little readout screens. "We've been momentarily pulled into artificial orbit around Ksthnt Five."

"You know what the universe needs more of?" Nicholas remarks, feet up on the rail, mouth half-full of an orange slice, enjoying the quiet for once. "Vowels." 

"Nah!" the Doctor is kicking levers and banging hammers on things. "Just a more equal distribution. Ooh, sometime I'll take you to see the ruined palaces on Aaooeii i Eaoi." 

"I think I've been there, isn't it near Swansea?"

"Excuse me, can we get back to 'stuck'?" Donna asks pointedly. 

"No problem! We'll pick up speed a bit and slingshot right off. Two, three days max," the Doctor beams. 

"Might be nice to catch up on sleep," Nicholas says. "And you've been promising us a guided tour of the TARDIS."

Privately, he also thinks it'll give him time to work on a USB port for the TARDIS, so that when he leaves he can take the Whenkipedia with him. It'll be a nice present for Jack. A year with John Hart has taught him a lot about hybridised technology. 

"So we're stuck in the TARDIS for three days?" Donna asks.

"We'll keep busy," the Doctor insists. Donna looks petulant. "I think I have some board games around here somewhere. Isn't that what humans like? Board games when you're stuck inside on a rainy day and-or because of the artificial gravity generators of Ksthnt Five?"

"I'm quite good at Scrabble," Nicholas offers. 

"Too soon for Cluedo?" the Doctor ponders aloud. 

"Doctor," says Donna, and Nicholas knows that evil look. It's the look Donna gets when she's about to pull a fast one. The Doctor can't see it, because he's busily rummaging in a wall-panel, apparently attempting to locate his board games. 

"Yes, wha -- oh, I've been looking for that," the Doctor says, tossing aside what looks like a gnawed-on stuffed toy with Meccano-set prosthetic limbs. 

"Have you ever played Mornington Crescent?" Donna asks. Nicholas has to bite his lip quickly to suppress a chortle.

"Mornington...?" the Doctor asks, leaning out again. There's dust in his hair.

"Mornington Crescent."

"Isn't that a stop on the Northern Line?" the Doctor asks, looking between them in confusion. 

"My team went to the junior Nationals when I was fourteen," Nicholas beams. 

"Brilliant," Donna beams back. "Do you want to open or shall I?"

"Not a card game, is it?" The Doctor is still looking lost.

"The goal is go along naming Tube stations until you get to get to Mornington Crescent," Nicholas answers. "You can start, Donna, that's only fair."

The truth is that Mornington Crescent has no rules. It's a ruse of a game, meant to amuse and confuse whoever's watching. And while normally they're trailing a step behind the Doctor, when it comes to sheer human perverseness Donna Noble leaves the Doctor well in the dust. 

"Just follow along, you'll get the hang of it," Donna says. "All right, I'll open: Euston Square."

"Aldgate," Nicholas says promptly.

"All Saints!"

"Upminster."

"Temple."

"Ah! St. Paul's."

The Doctor's head is flicking back and forth like a dog watching a ball being thrown. 

"Stepney Green."

"Moorgate."

Nicholas sucks in a breath through his teeth. "Maybe we should have set the rules beforehand, but are we playing straight or International rules?"

"Intergalactic I should think," Donna replies. "Why?"

"Well, it's just, you can't play Moorgate from Stepney Green in the straight rules, it's on the Circle Line."

"Yes you can," the Doctor says unexpectedly, and they both look at him. "Because it's on Northern as well, and it's a Tuesday."

Nicholas sees Donna's jaw drop. He's well aware that his own face must betray his surprise.

The Doctor beams at them. "You two ought to learn you can't put one over on me. I played internationally for Scotland in 9340. Don't look so amazed, this sort of game never really goes out of fashion. Now," he adds, holding up a deck of cards. "Rummy?"

Donna kills them both at cards, until Nicholas gets up to make them some tea and comes back to a furious game of Egyptian Ratscrew that doesn't end until the Doctor breaks a finger and Nicholas has to splint it for him. 

They're almost a family, him and the Doctor and Donna. The Doctor reminds him at once of his father and his younger brothers, and Donna would definitely remind him of his sister if he had a sister, and Nicholas feels also a little bit sometimes like a mum or dad himself, looking after their scrapes and cooking and such. 

Until the library, after which Donna kicks him out of the kitchen and is the only one allowed to cook their meals for like three weeks. The Doctor lets her. 

Nicholas doesn't always understand those two. 

***

_"Don't wander off" is really more of a guideline than a rule._

Actually, Nicholas often thinks the TARDIS likes him better than it likes Donna.

He doesn't think the Doctor does, the Doctor is supremely impartial about his companions -- well, most of them, he's read the Whenkipedia entry about Rose -- but the TARDIS, maybe, it likes Nicholas. It takes them places that Nicholas would like even when the Doctor says he's taking them places Donna will like. He was in heaven in the manor house, and now -- and now! Instead of a boring sunny beach like Donna wanted, they're in a _library._

He wanders a few steps, towards one of the high dark bookshelves, stunned by what the Doctor is telling them -- this is _The_ Library, the biggest library in the universe, no name, just a big old "the". 

"You two have fun," Nicholas says, aware that normally the reaction he's having is only in response to naked people. The biggest library ever. An entire _planet of library._ "I'm going to ramble."

"What have I told you about rambling?" the Doctor demands. Nicholas gives him a patient look.

"Doctor, this is a _library_. I took my degree in _library science_." 

"Three thousand years ago!" the Doctor retorts. 

"Yeah, but I can still find my way." Nicholas examines one of the books. "We're in the religions section."

This gives both Donna and the Doctor pause. 

"How d'you know that?" the Doctor asks. Nicholas holds up the book.

"Good old Library of Congress call numbers," he says. "Nice to see some things don't change."

"You've got the entire Library of Congress call number system memorised?" Donna asks. 

"Nope, but we used to joke about the religions section," Nicholas says. "The call lettering for religions is BS."

Donna giggles. The Doctor looks faintly amused. 

"Regardless," he says sternly, "You're coming with us."

"But Doctor -- "

"Heel, Nicholas!" he calls back at him, as he leaves the room. 

"Yes, Doctor," Nicholas sighs.

"And put that book back!" the Doctor calls. Nicholas looks at the book in his hand and puts it back -- not on the shelf, _not on the shelf_ , on a shelving cart where taken-down books belong.

He wants to bite his tongue, because that's what Nicholas does, but he can't quite keep himself from objecting a second time when the Doctor takes a book out of Donna's hands and refuses to let her read anything -- he throws around the word "spoilers" casually, but there's a dark sharp edge to his voice that Nicholas doesn't like. 

"Doctor," he says, trying to be patient.

"What?" the Doctor asks, leaning on the railing and gazing at the mile on mile of library below. 

"You brought us to the biggest library in the world and we can't read any of the books?" he asks. 

"Yeah, but you can...see...sights...and such," the Doctor replies airily.

"Biggest library in the world. Can't read the books," Nicholas repeats.

"You don't want to spoil the ending, do you?" The Doctor turns and narrows his eyes. "Oh lord, you do. You're one of those people who flips right to the ending to see what happens, aren't you?"

"I don't mind knowing what's going to happen," Nicholas replies. "It doesn't spoil anything for me, I still enjoy the story for its own sake. Books are like -- they're life, Doctor."

"Oouw, now, that's not exactly true, is it?" the Doctor asks, gesturing around him. "That's my point, really, I mean, books aren't life, life is life, and here we are, in life, being alive. With books nearby. So they can't be life, can they?" He frowns as Nicholas waves this off. "Are you telling me you think everything you've seen, all the wonders I've shown you, you could get from a book?"

"Are you telling me we could have got to see them without books?" Nicholas retorts. The Doctor narrows his eyes again.

"You _are_ getting a bit fidgety, aren't you?" he asks. "Humans, I never know..."

Nicholas and Donna share a look of affectionate despair for their Doctor. Really, sometimes he has all the social skills of a brain-damaged beagle. 

The Doctor taps his fingers against one of his pockets, the soft whap of the fabric against the leather wallet of his psychic paper loud in the silence. 

"All right. Make you a deal. You," pointing at Nicholas, "wander around if you're so inclined, but try not to get too far away. Don't touch, I'll know if you read any of the endings. We'll call you over the PA when we're ready to leave. Donna, with me?"

"Course," Donna says, as Nicholas crosses his arms and lifts his chin, aware that he's behaving like a teenager who just got the keys to Dad's car but has to have it home by eight-thirty. 

"Well?" the Doctor asks Nicholas.

"Fine," Nicholas says. "If you need me I'll be in Extribuli."

"Exwhat?" Donna asks. 

"Look it up!" Nicholas calls over his shoulder, wondering actually how many volumes the OED now runs to. Extribulum -- ex, out from; tribulum, a machine. The opposite of the incunabula. Works that exist in electrical form, at the cusp of the rise of the e-published book.

This is not Nicholas's first visit to the fifty-first century. 

The section on Extribuli is a huge room filled with screens, many of them cracked or dead. Nicholas spends a pleasant afternoon studying cover art and titles and authors who are now long since dust, people who were writing and working in the time he originally came from. He spends a bare hour there; after a while the room full of glowing gaptoothed rows of screens is rather eerie.

Library computers have _got_ to be more user-friendly now than they were in the twenty-first century, considering it would be pretty difficult to be _less_ user-friendly than that. Besides, this is what he was trained for, before he chucked having a normal life for service school, and butlering, and Torchwood, and the Doctor. 

He steps up to a functioning terminal and keys in a search for life-forms, narrowing it to life-forms not carrying a library card, male. When the screen flickers and wipes black he sighs, but after a second a new image appears --

"You're not the Doctor," he says to the freckled woman in the space suit in the computer.

"No, I'm not," she replies. 

"Sorry, I'm looking for -- "

_Is that Nicholas?_ a voice calls, somewhere very distant. _Tell him to stay in the light!_

"Ah," Nicholas says, before the woman can relay the message. "So we've found trouble, have we?"

"Flesh-eating shadows," she confirms.

"Splendid. I don't suppose you might put the Doctor on?"

_Five minutes! Have you got another chicken leg?_

"Or Donna?" Nicholas asks hopefully. 

"Stuck with me, I'm afraid," the woman says. "You've no idea who I am, do you?"

"No, miss. Ought I?"

She shakes her head, smiling -- a slightly smug smile, and one that immediately grates on his nerves. 

"I know you, that's all," she says. "You and the Doctor. But we won't meet for years. You look young."

"Er...thanks?"

_Ask him if he's in the computer!_

Nicholas looks around him. "No, I think I'm still in the library."

_Brilliant!_

"Rather," Nicholas says drily. The woman's smile increases slightly. "Shall I go back to the TARDIS, Doctor?"

_No! Stay there!_

"Easily enough done," Nicholas says. "I'll let you get back to...er. Whatever it was you were doing."

He spends the rest of the afternoon and well into the evening extremely confused. There are moments when lights flash and books fly about on their own; sometimes the Doctor shouts cryptic instructions over loudspeakers and he isn't certain if they're meant for him or if he's just overhearing them. At one point the face of a horribly disfigured woman flashes on the computer screen. Down the hallways, he can hear echoes of voices, some of them repeating the same unintelligible words over and over again. 

It occurs to him to dive into the databases and see what he can pull up on the Doctor. He manages to locate the fifty-first century equivalent of Lexis-Nexis and Jstor, but when the first article up is by Ianto Jones, in the recently-declassified Journal of Xenosociologic Studies, he immediately blanks the screen. There are things about Torchwood's future he doesn't need to know. 

On the other hand...

A search under "Author" in the main catalogue for Harkness, J, nets him ten thousand hits. He narrows it to Harkness, Jack which brings the hit count to the low four thousands, and then further narrows it to English-only books, which only drops him by about two hundred hits. 

He hesitates, then counts on Jack's vanity and adds "Captain" to the mix. 

Five hits. 

Nicholas closes his eyes and thinks about Retcon, about forgetting this, about biting his tongue when he goes back to Torchwood. He thinks about the smug smile of the woman who knows the Doctor but isn't known to him. 

Virtue is so annoying sometimes, he thinks, as he closes the search engine down. 

He keeps himself busy by inventing his own titles for books Jack would have written, if indeed those five books are by him and not some other Captain Jack Harkness. He starts with bodice-ripping romances and works his way through what kind of murder mysteries an immortal would write and whether maybe they're history books before wondering if Jack simply penned a five-volume autobiography and sold it as science fiction. Or bodice-ripping romance. Hard to say, with Jack.

He dozes for a short while, until Donna's voice wakes him.

"Nicholas?"

He starts up, turns to the screen. "Yes? What? I'm here!"

"Come back to the TARDIS," she says, and her eyes are infinitely sad. Worse than the time with the Ood, even. 

Nicholas makes them all hot mulled cider and curls up with Donna's head on his shoulder and one arm around hers, and they sit in the control room like that for hours, watching the Doctor muck about with maintenance as they fling themselves through space and time towards an unknown destination. He doesn't ask why Donna is so upset, or who the smug woman was; from the Doctor's distracted mutterings and his cold untouched cider it's obvious she died, and probably in the service of saving the galaxy or something, which is after all the Doctor's specialty. 

Turning the woman's words over in his mind, he comes to a handful of conclusions. Either he has years to go before he returns to Torchwood, which he doesn't think likely, or some day in some distant future the Doctor will come back for him again. The Doctor doesn't take up again with Companions once he's left them behind, the Whenkipedia has made that blatantly clear, but perhaps he'll -- need someone. To look after him. 

Because lord knows few enough companions have seemed to think about the care and feeding of the Doctor. 

***

_Life with the Doctor is meant for living hard and running fast. If you can't keep up, get out before it kills you._

The odds on the Whenkipedia of Nicholas or Donna remaining with the Doctor long (or surviving to old age) aren't necessarily impressive. 

Jack and Martha both did some homework on the passengers the TARDIS has carried over the centuries; while it isn't complete, they at least have stubs on seventeen other travelers with the Doctor, before Jack and Rose came around. Most of the early information was input by a mysterious user named Polly long before the creation of the Whenkipedia -- Jack's notes credit a digital journal she left behind, but Nicholas is buggered if he can find the journal itself. Polly is an enigma, but was probably a companion herself, and her reports combined with Jack's research aren't precisely pretty. 

Ian and Barbara are the first listed. They lost two years between leaving with the Doctor and returning home, and Jack's rummaging on Earth turned up the sad fact that Ian killed himself pretty quickly after and Barbara lived a solitary life. Dorothea Chaplet may or may not have been a companion, but her psychiatric medical file (uploaded by Martha) seemed to indicate that the TARDIS changed her for the worse, as it did to Tegan Jovanka. 

Katarina, apparently human but of uncertain historical origin, died at some point -- there's a little plaque to her in an out-of-the-way area of the TARDIS. 

Jack actually got to speak with one of them, Victoria Waterfield, a Victorian woman who jumped a century and ended up in the 20th. He said she smiled a lot and was quietly, desperately homesick. Martha found records on a woman named Jo who worked with UNIT while the Doctor was there and then chucked it all to go live in the Amazon where she died of malaria. Rose met Sarah Jane, who was still bitter years later that the Doctor abandoned her. Rose herself is trapped in a parallel existence with Mickey, though apparently she didn't die, which is something. Ben Jackson, a colleague of the mysterious Polly, made it to Admiral on Earth before he died, but either he didn't travel with the Doctor long or he covered his absence remarkably well. Martha's doing all right for herself, but Nicholas knows she lived through hell and now she's with Torchwood, which is nobody's idea of sanity. 

Vicki simply disappeared. 

Steven simply disappeared. 

Zoe, who apparently added information to Polly's journal, simply disappeared. 

Harry simply disappeared, though perhaps because he was working on top-secret NATO plans. 

Turlough -- probably, apparently, an alien -- disappeared. 

"Ace", gender unknown, disappeared. 

Adric died before his eighteenth birthday (another plaque). 

Jack can't die at all.

So Nicholas lies in bed one night when he can't sleep and knows Donna is reading and doesn't want company, and he reckons out his chances. 

If you count Jack's existence as "normal", which only a life in the TARDIS could possibly allow, Nicholas and Donna's odds of returning to Earth unscathed are level with their odds of dying -- 15% or so. Odds of going crazy are pretty much hovering at 25%, especially if you also count Jack's existence as crazy, because really Jack can be a bit mad at the best of times. 

He misses Ianto's mathematical skills, because his head starts to hurt calculating his likelihood of disappearing, which hovers around 40%. For all he knows this might mean going home and living happily ever after, but he sort of doubts it. 

There's a knock at his door.

He sits up and flicks the lights on with a wave of his hand, walking to the door to open it -- Donna's seen him in worse than a pair of boxers and a t-shirt, and the Doctor doesn't pay much attention to modesty. 

The Doctor is standing on the other side, looking forlorn. 

"Do you want tea?" the Doctor asks.

"Do you want me to make you some tea?" Nicholas replies. The Doctor nods. 

In the kitchen, which is cleaner since Nicholas came on board though he says it himself, he puts the kettle on and leans against the counter. The Doctor rubs the back of his head, as if he's trying to work a thought out of his brain.

"I can hear you, you know," he says finally. "Not usually, just -- when it's quiet. I can hear you and Donna. Especially when you dream, but even when you're awake. You have wonderful dreams," he adds. "Most humans I know don't -- dream so nicely as you do. All about...chasing the stars. Donna's the same. Even Rose -- " his mouth twists painfully. "Even Rose dreamed about terrible things, often. She stayed on for me, really, in the end. You and Donna stay on because you love it here."

"Memory's a tricky thing," Nicholas offers. "Seems to me like Rose loved it too."

"Ah yes -- your little research project," the Doctor mutters. Nicholas didn't know he knew about that. "Of course I knew. I've told you, it's hard to put one over on me. And you've been thinking of nothing else for hours. All those numbers slotting around slowly in your head."

"I'm no good at maths," Nicholas says.

"I'd noticed. S'all right, not everything is maths. Well, actually, everything _is_ maths when you get down to it, a whole universe of maths, but not the kind of maths you're thinking of, and anyway it's a depressing thought."

Nicholas just nods. He's used to the digressions. They drive Donna absolutely bats. 

"If you want to go home, you can," the Doctor says.

"Not yet."

"You always say that."

"It's always true. Do you want me to leave?"

"No."

"Well, then." Nicholas pours the hot water into the teapot. "It's only...I wonder about the price one pays, that's all. As if there's some kind of debt gone into, when you become the Doctor's man. And if so I was already pretty deeply in debt when I started."

"If it's any consolation, the ones you think disappeared -- most of them left me willingly," the Doctor says, and he looks even more unhappy than he had before. "Most of them are happy, somewhere. Or were, or will be, time being what it is."

"It is. D'you mind if I tell Donna?"

The Doctor shakes his head. Nicholas checks the tea.

"They left because they realised it's a bit horrible sometimes -- or they found someone they...loved. Some of them left for love."

"Someone they loved more than you, you mean."

The Doctor doesn't answer, and Nicholas pours the tea. A touch of sugar. He offers it as a gift, as always.

"We're only human," Nicholas says, and the Doctor snorts a laugh. "I mean it. There's only so long anyone can go before they realise that they haven't got hundreds of years to go knocking around the universe with you. We're taught to want things. People. A place in the world that isn't defined by the walls of the TARDIS. Really I think Jack would be best for you, but then he wouldn't go, and you won't have him. I'm not a Time Lord, I don't pretend to understand. Don't need to really."

The Doctor sips his tea, and his shoulders slump down a little. 

"We do love you, Doctor," Nicholas says. "Now, drink your tea and let me go back to bed."

The Doctor is ancient and alien, and no human will ever properly know him, not really. He hears the stars and can taste magic. But even a short-lived human man like Nicholas can make the Doctor smile, and one of those smiles is worth any payment Nicholas will one day have to make for being a companion. 

Life could not be more wonderful than this: making tea for the Doctor in the middle of the night, drifting through the universe, when all gods and all kings and all good children are asleep.


	2. Chapter 2

_The Doctor is feared and revered by civilisations across the known worlds. He doesn't need either from you._

Nicholas is not certain how he came to be here.

There is an odd role-reversal in his position; he remembers waking on Gwen's sofa once with Jack's hand resting gently on his hair. Then, it was odd to be comforted so...so personally by the leader of Torchwood, by his employer, for all Jack is an affectionate and friendly man. Now it is equally strange to be sitting on an alien bed on an alien world with an alien's head in his lap, ruffling the Doctor's fine, messy hair while the Doctor sleeps.

He wasn't even certain the Doctor needed sleep until now.

He'd seemed all right at dinner, though he also seemed to look to Donna for reassurance more than usual, after his trip to the Emerald Falls went horribly awry. Nicholas had heard the story of course, it was on all the newsvids, and he'd gotten drips and drabs out of the Doctor himself, enough to know that it was harrowing even for him.

There is a depth in the Doctor's eyes, a spark or perhaps a force of nature, something that always reminds Nicholas that this man is not human, is not even close. Whatever it is, when the Doctor spoke of the thing outside in the poisonous sunlight his eyes had bottomed out and become great yawning dark pits, and even Donna had looked away.

Nicholas rests his fingers against the Doctor's head, above and a little behind his ear, thumb exploring the shape of it, the too-human ridges of cartilage under skin. What kind of cosmic joke must it be, that the Time Lords are so ancient and so wise -- his Time Lord, anyway -- and yet look so very human.

He'd been close to sleep when the Doctor rang the chime on his door and came in almost without asking, pacing back and forth, talking about what they ought to do the next day and debating, with himself, the merits of Donna's impending seaweed wrap -- "Seaweed, I mean really? It's wet leaves, and you know osmosis doesn't work the way I think most humans think it does!" -- until Nicholas finally caught his arm and made him stop.

The Doctor had looked down at the hand on his arm, and his face had taken on a sort of crushed, frightened look.

"I couldn't move," he'd said softly, and Nicholas had found himself with his arms around the untouchable Doctor, marveling at how such a huge presence really was so incredibly slight. He knows now that he can probably pick the Doctor up bodily if he ever has to, and Nicholas is not a large man to begin with.

The Doctor is fragile, which is something he never expected to think, let alone understand. His body can be taken away from him, and was. Faced with an alien he couldn't communicate with, couldn't understand then and can't now, the Doctor lost his control.

He can feel the Doctor's touch on his mind in sleep, though he never has before. Nicholas has no telepathic ability whatsoever, Torchwood taught him that. Still, he can feel it now, like a whisper in his ear, and he opens obediently and lets the Doctor inside. Feels him sifting through his memories.

No, he won't give the Doctor his boring childhood, his little tragedies and triumphs, not like he once did for John Hart; the Doctor doesn't want ordinary, doesn't like domestic. And he can't very well give him the wonders he's seen at Torchwood and in the TARDIS, because the wonders of the universe are tainted for the Doctor tonight. There's precious little left, really.

Donna would know what to do. Jack, even, might know. Donna would probably shout but she'd know the right words, and Jack is past-master at distracting people from their thoughts. Nicholas is just a provider of creature comforts. This would be so much easier if all the Doctor needed was a cup of tea or a banana sandwich (yuck).

The Doctor has no need to show off his power, has never treated Nicholas as if he were less than a person, as if he were less than the companions that traveled in the TARDIS before him. But he can feel something, where the Doctor touches on his mind, and with a relieved sigh he understands. It isn't memory or feeling the Doctor is seeking.

His body was taken from him and he was locked up inside his own head. That would be hard enough for a human, but for the Doctor it speaks to darker urges -- the drive to dominate, a well-hidden instinct to destroy anything he can't be master of. And Nicholas knows now what he needs.

He throws the doors wide, metaphorically, and lets the Doctor take his mind, lets the alien consciousness wrap around him and control him without flinching. The Doctor fills his thoughts, every inch of them, stretching and laughing, and for a moment Nicholas thinks he's made a terrible mistake --

But then the laughter turns gentle, the stretch and flex of mental muscles becomes a cradling gesture. The Doctor surrounds and protects him, walls him away from the world like a guardian. This is not a hostile invasion, not a theft. The Doctor needed to know that he isn't the creature that lives out in the flat hot wilds on the diamond planet. Master of the dark places, king of himself, the Doctor simply surrounds him with warmth and takes nothing not freely offered.

Nicholas is the one sitting with the Doctor's head cradled against his body, but the Doctor is the one holding Nicholas, and the Doctor is pleased to hold and protect, not to imprison and destroy.

He cards his fingers through the Doctor's hair affectionately. So typical of his Doctor, not to fear death but to fear becoming the Other, the monster.

"There you are," he says softly, when the Doctor's body shudders and the last of the tension, even in sleep, eases away. "Was that so hard?"

For just a moment, as the Doctor slips into dreams, the universe sings for Nicholas.

***

_Please make every attempt not to create or enter parallel universes._   
_Edit, CJHarkness: Catty, Martha._

Nicholas despairs of Donna's clothing. 

He's tried, God knows he's tried. He's jettisoned the most egregious offenders in transit, but somehow she always buys more, and the TARDIS, faithless whore, encourages her by providing replacements in the wardrobe room. They've left a trail of horrible clothing across time and space that's probably a marvel to behold.

Marketplace is a bazaar planet, that's what the Doctor called it. Nicholas got two minutes' great taunting out of that, playing Bizarre against Bazaar and making Donna weep with laughter as he bickered back and forth with the Doctor. Off in the distance he can see the super-hyper-malls that the Doctor described, but true to form they make their visit to the alleyway markets, the narrow cart-filled district where all the real shopping gets done. 

"Donna," Nicholas calls, distracting her from an examination of a spice-merchant's wares. "Come here a minute!"

"Oh, darling, it'd look brilliant on you," she says, when he holds up a fitted brocade dress. 

"I thought for you," he replies, because it _would_ look gorgeous on her and also he is totally secure in his masculinity and wore a kilt to his university graduation ball. 

"My tits'd never fit," she sighs. And Nicholas sighs. And he thinks maybe the Doctor sighs too just a little.

"We could have it altered," Nicholas offers. "Buy a few, we'll take them back to like, what, the 1980s, I know a great tailor in Cardiff."

The Doctor shoots him a warning look, but Nicholas just grins at him and pushes the dress at Donna.

"I like my clothes," Donna says, gesturing to the billowy shirt and formless trousers and gigantic belt. "Are you telling me you don't like my clothes?"

Self-preservation is strong in Nicholas.

"Just thought you'd like a change, that's all," he says resignedly, putting the dress back. 

"She's right, you know," the Doctor grins at him as Donna wanders off. "You'd look a treat in that."

"Go on," Nicholas laughs, then mimics Donna (badly). "Don't you like my clothes?"

"Just thought you'd like a change," the Doctor replies, in what is apparently supposed to be a rendering of Nicholas's accent. "Right then. What's it going to be? Pressies for you and Donna?"

"Food," Nicholas says decidedly. "I could just do with a stir-fry. You buy, I'll cook."

"Fair enough," the Doctor says, watching Donna strike up a conversation somewhere distant. "What about those little things with the crab in, they're fried, you know -- "

"Crab rangoon," Nicholas says. "Oh yes. Come along then."

For once Nicholas makes the Doctor carry everything, wandering from stall to stall and shoving his way to the front. He buys something that looks mostly chicken-like, listening to the Doctor talk about the Avian Plague and how chickens are a delicacy in the future. He buys mushrooms (no shortage of them) and peppers and bamboo shoots and water-chestnuts, oil and spices and vinegar and a salty almost-soy sauce, and a mess of pre-made sort-of-rangoons he can re-heat later. 

"Do you know what I don't understand?" the Doctor says, staggering under the bags and cartons he's loaded with.

"Can't be much, and I wouldn't think you'd admit it if there was," Nicholas answers.

"Don't take the piss, young Nicholas. I don't understand how cooking even survived. Most spacefaring cultures have boiled it down to some kind of caloric substance that provides energy, laced with the necessary minerals, vitamins, and other...things you need. It's an incredible undertaking just getting a cow from one country to the next, let alone interplanetary cow-herding. And yet there's the Galactic Chisholm Trail, there are space-cowboys, and everywhere you go..." he ducks just in time to escape being clobbered by a flailing, soon-to-be-dinner fowl of some kind, "...wherever humanity travels, the food goes with them. Species who've forgotten they even _had_ tastebuds pay outrageous sums to eat in human cookeries."

"Do Time Lords not cook, then?" 

"Well, we can. I make a very good scone," the Doctor answers, but he looks sad, and Nicholas feels like an ass for bringing up the Time Lords at all. "I mean I understand why people eat, food is delicious, just not how it escaped the more practical considerations of humanity."

"Humans have touched every star," Nicholas says absently. "When you're far away, sometimes all you can think about is where you came from. Telly shows, the buildings on your street...food. There's nothing that smells like a nice seared steak, or a bit of curry and naan. It's the taste of home."

"Talking of, here we are," the Doctor says, nudging the door of the TARDIS open with a shoulder. He dumps the groceries in the little kitchen, dusts his hands, and smiles at Nicholas. "Suppertime?"

"Ten or fifteen minutes," Nicholas agrees, cracking his knuckles. "Best go get Donna. And see if you can pick up another bottle of wine?"

The Doctor is gone not three minutes when the lights suddenly go out.

That can't be good.

They come on again, just as Nicholas is fumbling around to try and locate whatever the Time Lord equivalent of a torch is. They're red and eerie, and there's a strange chime in the background, like a clocktower perpetually striking. 

When the Doctor and Donna burst into the TARDIS they are just in time to catch Nicholas having a furious argument with the TARDIS in the control room. He breaks off in the middle of telling her that she is being a _very naughty spaceship_ and stares at them, because the Doctor has gone white and Donna looks like she's been through hell.

"What's Bad Wolf?" she demands of the Doctor, but Nicholas knows; he's read Rose's account of it, and it gave him chills.

"The end of the universe," the Doctor says, and Nicholas knows too that there will be no wine and stir-fry and satiated storytelling about their adventures on Marketplace this evening.

"Damn," he says feelingly.

***

_There is another world, a world without the Doctor, without the fragile protection he affords the small planet teeming with life. In that world, ravaged by alien races and human greed, Nicholas stands in front of the Tourist Information Centre in Cardiff on the Plass, bags on the ground in front of him. In his pocket is a key; old-fashioned, perhaps, but the only key that will open the only panel that will allow access to Torchwood Three's base. He is the only one left who knows the access code, though of course there are upper-echelon codes that could override the lock entirely._

_Plastic sheeting has been placed over the remaining chairs and desks. The medical supplies and any useful tools have been sent on to Glasgow; likewise any alien tech that hasn't been permanently archived. Nicholas himself, like the last complex piece of equipment, is bound for Torchwood Two on the next transport north._

_Being Torchwood affords him some luxuries that others won't get, like speedy reassignment and guaranteed employment on arrival._

_The Rift will have to mind itself in the ghost town Cardiff has become as the radiation cloud threatens. If a monster does come through, it will find itself in potentially harsher climes than it left. There will be no humans here for it to feed on._

_The alien-design generators will run for a thousand years, keeping the Hub's security intact, the morgue and and the cryo units functional. As a precaution, before he completed the closedown, Nicholas exhumed Jack's brother, shot him twice in the head, and buried him in Bute Park. If Jack comes back, Nicholas will ask forgiveness, but it won't really matter if he doesn't get it. If Jack never returns, then he'll never know._

_Nicholas has learned to be hard. Being left behind to mind the Hub while Gwen and Ianto and Jack went off to destroy the Sontarans was the final straw. Still, he is Torchwood and he promised to serve her to his death. He will go home, to Scotland, to Torchwood Two and its shiny new government grant for weapons research. He has a purpose still._

_He adjusts Jack's coat around his shoulders, picks up his two small bags -- clothes, gun, one or two books, the last of the carefully hoarded and rationed coffee beans (good for barter) -- and begins the long walk to the UNIT staging area, the first step of the journey out of Cardiff._

_The stars don't look so inviting as they once did._

_And soon, there are no stars at all._

***

_You are not immortal. There have been others before you and will be others after you._

When it is all over -- the shouting, the deaths, the Daleks, the threats, the guns, the Reality Bomb, the genocide of the Dalek race -- when all this is finished, Nicholas stands in the shadows and watches as one by one the Companions fall.

Mrs. Tyler is the first, and she falls asleep in the TARDIS control room itself. Nicholas catches Jack's eye and together they carry her into one of the myriad bedrooms. Jack, having sat down long enough to ease the blankets up over Mrs. Tyler, yawns hugely and barely manages to stagger to another room, one arm over Nicholas's shoulders.

"We saved the universe," Jack says to him. "And everyone's still alive."

Not everyone is still alive, but Nicholas knows that he means Torchwood. He brushes Jack's hair off his forehead and leaves him to sleep. It's strange to see the real Jack in the TARDIS after a year of only seeing the slightly-translucent holo!Jack. 

As he returns to the control room he passes one of the Doctors -- that's going to take some getting used to -- leading Mickey and Martha to someplace they can rest. He passes Sarah Jane Smith, too, the famous Sarah Jane whose exploits he's read about in the Whenkipedia, and offers her directions to an empty room. 

By the time he's returned to the control room, the Doctor (the other one) is helping Donna along. 

"I need to..." the Doctor hesitates. "Stay with her for a bit. Are you all right, Nicholas?"

"Fine, thanks," Nicholas says. "Thought I'd brew some tea."

"Brilliant," the Doctor beams. "Save some for me."

"Of course," Nicholas beams back. He does love the Doctor, even when there are two of him. 

There's still someone in the control room, however.

"Hello, miss," he says quietly, and she turns and gives him a startled look. "We weren't introduced before."

"I don't think I know you," she replies. 

"You wouldn't," he says. "I'm not very important."

"You must be a bit, or you wouldn't be here," she smiles, and that is when Nicholas knows he's going to like Rose Tyler.

"Well, I make pretty good tea. Would you like some?" he offers.

Rose sits at the table in the little kitchen, watching him serenely as he fills the kettle, puts it on the hob, pours some strange yellow alien tea into a tea-bag, and places it in the pot. 

"What's your name?" she asks, resting her chin on her fists.

"Nicholas," he says. "I work for Jack Harkness. Well -- used to."

"Before the Doctor?"

"Something like that. I think it's time I went back, though," Nicholas adds, studying the kitchen, realising he won't be there for much longer. "I always told the Doctor I wouldn't stay forever."

"You must be the only one, then."

"We all have our passions, Miss Tyler. Mine is Torchwood."

She tilts her head. "How'd you know my name?"

"I've heard a lot about you." He pours the water into the pot -- the TARDIS has a really good hob -- and carries it to the table along with two mugs. "Milk?"

"Please. Good things, I hope?"

"Certainly. But it was Jack telling them, so it could hardly be otherwise."

She laughs as he fetches the milk and sugar. 

"This is very civilised, all things considered," she says. 

"I could get down the biscuit tin if you want."

"Nah. Tea's enough."

Nicholas nods and pours, and watches as she adds the milk and sips.

"Thank you."

"My pleasure, miss."

"You can call me Rose." She sips again. "So you're going home with Jack? Are you and he...?"

Nicholas laughs. "God, no. He's got a boyfriend. And his boyfriend has a gun, so..."

He's never thought about Rose Tyler giggling; in his mind she was solemn and smart and the Doctor's perfect fit. And she is perfect for him, but not in a way Nicholas had ever thought. 

"Someone managed to tie down Jack?" she asks, when she's done laughing.

"Ianto Jones -- the bloke you saw on the monitor with Gwen."

"Can't blame Jack for that."

"No."

They drink in silence for a while, until eventually the Doctor returns -- the one in the blue suit has buggered off somewhere, but the one in the brown suit, the one that Nicholas thinks of as _his_ , pours himself a cup of tea and sits down with them.

Nicholas knows he is leaving, and he is leaving much more happily than many have left the TARDIS. He thinks Donna will stay on, hopes so; what would she do on Earth, after all? The famous Sarah Jane has a son to go home to, and Martha will come back with him and Jack. Rose...god knows what will happen to Rose. God knows what will happen to the two Doctors.

"Nicholas," the Doctor says, and strong fingers tip his chin up. "No staring into your tea tonight. You have one last night on the TARDIS -- "

" -- you knew?" Nicholas asks, surprised.

" -- I did, yes, well, lucky guess -- and you shouldn't spend it in the kitchen drinking tea."

Nicholas glances at Rose. Her smile is warm and open, and though he would have thought the Doctor would only have eyes for her, the Doctor is looking at Nicholas still.

"Actually," Nicholas says, "I don't think I'd mind it this way."

"Sit down," Rose says softly to the Doctor. "Introduce me to your Nicholas."

"Rose, this is Nicholas," the Doctor says. "He does for me. Nicholas, this is Rose. She saved me."

Nicholas loses track of time, sitting in the warm kitchen listening to the Doctor and Rose tell stories, but eventually the others wake up, and slowly they trickle in until there's nothing for it but to leave the little table and put another kettle on, and then perhaps some eggs, and of course fried bread (Jack loves fried bread) and sausages for Mickey and Sarah Jane and if he's going to make sausages he'll have enough time to make some porridge...

Nicholas spends his last morning aboard the TARDIS happily making breakfast for the Companions and the two Doctors, serving it as they sit together and laugh together. The only dark spot is the Doctor in the blue suit, who smiles when someone smiles at him but the rest of the time seems to watch Rose, unblinkingly, and accepts food only from her hands or from Nicholas.

"Are you coming home?" Jack asks, wiping his mouth with his thumb and catching Nicholas's sleeve with his other hand as he passes.

"Yes, Captain," Nicholas says. 

"Good. Ianto pines for you."

"That's a bald untruth, Jack," Nicholas laughs. "But I'll come home anyway."

Earth is crisp and cool and the rains come not ten minutes after they disembark from the TARDIS. Martha and Mickey swear and laugh and start to run; Jack pulls his coat over his head and follows, and Nicholas pelts after them, enjoying the rain and the fresh air and the feel of solid ground beneath his feet as he runs for the Hub and home.

***

_Life is never the same after the Doctor. You should know that._   
_Edit, NicholasE: Except when it is._   
_Edit, CJHarkness: Cheeky bastard._

It is a truth that there is more than one parallel world, and that meddling with physics and time can cause changes that one man may not notice and another man may see. Nicholas is shocked, when he returns to the Hub, to find that there is no John Hart in this Torchwood; that Martha never left UNIT (though she is now, which is nice); that not as much time has passed for them as for him. He realises fairly quickly what the problem is; whether it's a ripple in time that washes past those who've traveled in the TARDIS or whether he really did slip through from another universe, it's pretty immaterial. Six of one, half-dozen of the other. 

It's peculiar, but he adjusts. He doesn't bother telling anyone; it seems like bad taste to mention it, the fact that Nicholas is not in his right universe. Besides, after three or four weeks the feeling goes away. 

The things that really matter are the same: Jack flirts with everyone and everything, but only means it with Ianto; Gwen and Rhys are nauseatingly adorable; Martha is lippy and brilliant and good for Jack; Owen and Tosh are the honoured dead. Myfanwy is _pissed_ at Nicholas for going away, but forgives him when he brings her a huge slab of ahi tuna. His mum is even more pissed that he hasn't returned her calls, but an hour on the phone with her settles her mind. Even his family is thriving; his younger brother got into Swansea, so he won't be far away when term time comes around, and the youngest has a girlfriend Mum disapproves of (which means she must be all right). Martha, of course, Nicholas is well used to; he greets Tom like an old friend, which confuses the hell out of Tom for a while, but he gets over it. Mickey he's never known, and doesn't like much, but then he didn't really like Owen much either, and certainly he and John Hart had their moments, so there's always got to be one. And Mickey does do a good job, at least. 

These are the important things: that his people are happy, that they have hope, that they know love. 

"You seem like you're settling back in decently," Ianto says to him one morning, as they stand on the Plass sipping coffees and waiting for a lorry delivery from UNIT. "D'you miss it?"

"Yes and no," Nicholas replies. "It was brilliant while it lasted, but this is my home."

"Good," Ianto says. "Ready to face the future head on instead of sneaking up behind it and coshing it?"

Nicholas laughs.

"Yes," he says.

**Author's Note:**

> Notes: Mornington Crescent, the game, comes from I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue, a long-running radio comedy quiz show. It doesn't have any rules there, either. It just pretends it does. 
> 
> Yes, the religions section, or at least a portion of it, really is filed under BS in the Library of Congress call-number system. 
> 
> I totally invented the word Extribuli and I hope that you will all find some way to use it so that I can have everlasting fame. 
> 
> As for the litany of Companions that Nicholas goes over in his head -- obviously some are missing, but I chose to leave out those least likely to be known to others updating the records. I took the rest from Wikipedia, though some of the details are purely made up by myself.


End file.
